Gem City History: 25 Quick Dayton Facts

   For this week’s edition of Gem City History we’re gonna mix it up a bit. Instead of focusing on a single topic I’ll just throw some fast facts that are interesting enough to be need to know, but not long enough for a full fledged article.

So enjoy some rapid fire information from all time periods of Dayton history.

1. Dayton was located by colonists on April Fools Day. It was April 1, 1796 when Benjamin Van Cleve and 11 settlers discovered the Miami Valley.
2. Dayton was officially founded and colonized in 1805, seven years before Ohio would be ratified as a state.
3. Dayton is the sixth largest city in Ohio.
4. While Dayton might get snow every now and then, the city’s maximum single fall recorded was nine inches.
5. During the ice age, two thirds of northwestern Ohio was covered by glaciers. As the glaciers melted large ridges of sand and gravel, called eskers, formed by meltwater depositing sediment in cave systems below the ice. Eskers were prevalent in the area south of Carillon Park and have been an important source of sand and gravel for the Dayton area. Remnants of these eskers are visible as “The Bluffs” towering high over the south end of Carillon Park.
6. The city houses more than 900 churches representing all denominations.
7. There are 26 colleges in the Dayton area.
8. Dayton has the most inventions per capita of any city in the nation.
9. The Civil War Soldiers Monument was unveiled in the middle of downtown in 1884, and still stands to this day. The crowd that turned out to attend the ceremony consisted of 100,000 people, a huge number compared to the actual population of Dayton, which was reported at 40,000.
10. The model for that monument was Pvt. George Washington Fair, a carpenter and bricklayer who was born in Dayton.
11. Wilberforce University, founded in 1856, is the country’s oldest private historically black university. It is named in honor of William Wilberforce, an 18th century abolitionist.
12. The world’s first speeding ticket was written in Dayton. It was written by the Dayton Police Department in 1904, according to the Dayton Police History Foundation. The ticket was issued to Harry Myers on West Third Street for traveling 12 mph.
13. Dayton is home to the first soap box derby race competition, held in 1933. They raced on Burkhardt Avenue, and the event was conceived by Myron Scott, a photographer for the Dayton Daily News. The attendance was estimated to be over 40,000 people.
14. Magician Harry Houdini made several stops to entertain Daytonians in the early 1900’s. One trick included hanging from the Dayton Daily News building by his ankles, and in another, he escaped from a box made by carpenters from the NCR company.
15. The Rolling Stones performed at Hara Arena in 1964, just two years after the band formed. They bombed and were panned by critics, with one from the Dayton Daily News mocking their “rag-tag” appearance, and describing the music as “their brand of noise.”
16. Dayton’s tallest building is the Kettering Tower, which was built in 1970. It has 30 floors and is 405 feet tall.
17. There are a few former Indian burial grounds located in the city: one at the corner of Water Street (now Monument Avenue) and Beckel Street (Beckel Street still currently exists in part, but no longer intersects with Monument Avenue), one on the Fairgrounds Hill, one on a knoll in Woodland Cemetery, one at the north end of the Dayton View Bridge, and one at the west end of the Third Street Bridge.
18. Kettering Fairmont High School is attended by approximately 2,500 students, making it the sixth largest high school in Ohio.
19. The Miami Valley Aquifer is estimated to hold 1.5 trillion gallons of clean water. This has led to an abundance of water that the city encourages local businesses to use and is a draw for new businesses to form. It’s most often used by the many breweries in town.
20. While the Dayton Arcade is a shell of its former self, it used to be a major trading hub in its heyday. It had more than 200 vendor stalls, and for those who weren’t interested in buying the normal commodities like coffee, bread and ice could buy some exotic items such as Jamaican bananas, Messina lemons and parakeets and canaries.
21. Many Fortune 500 companies were founded in Dayton, including Dayco, Delphi (previously Delco), Reynolds and Reynolds, the Mead Corporation, NCR, IAMS pet food and Huffy (maker of bicycles).
22. The U.S. Air Force Museum is located in Dayton, and is the largest free admission museum in the country.
23. Dayton hosts the HAMvention, which is the largest gathering of Ham radio enthusiasts in the nation.
24. Dayton at one time had more auto workers than anywhere in the U.S. outside of Detroit and Flint, Michigan.
25. Dayton is one of the few cities in the country that still utilizes an electric trolley bus system.

   These were 25 facts about Dayton you may or may not have heard of, but I hope you found out something new and had fun reading this edition of Gem City History.

Henry Wolski
Executive Editor